


every time you go

by clean



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Love Triangles, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Relationship Study, [frisbee dog meme] NO comfort!! ONLY hurt!!, not particularly bughead friendly. he's gay. apologies, the inevitable dissolution of childhood fantasy romances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25085272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clean/pseuds/clean
Summary: “What else would it be about?” she replies, even though she knows there’s another question with another answer, one that neither of them likes, one that Archie was always too oblivious to figure out.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	every time you go

**Author's Note:**

> this is way longer than it has any business being i'm sorry <3 basically just 7k of teenage drama finding its way into young adulthood. check the tags because this might not be the vibe you're into. when i said non linear relationship study i Meant it

It’s seventh grade and it’s the last school dance of the year and the stupid DJ is playing stupid Photograph by stupid Ed Sheeran, and Cheryl just _loves_ drama so she’d sidled in and asked Archie to slow-dance with her. In middle school, that means that the girl puts her arms around the boy’s neck or her hands on his shoulders, and the boy puts his hands on her waist, and they just softly sway.

 _It’s all so stupid,_ Betty thinks bitterly, watching them move awkwardly, Cheryl looking totally bored and Archie too nice to try and leave.

“This is so dumb,” someone says, and Betty turns around to find Jughead standing behind her, leaning precariously against a wall covered in poorly-crafted paper decorations. They don’t really do this often—willingly talk to each other without Archie being there. Why would they? But for once Betty can’t bring herself to disagree with him. Hey, if someone has to suffer over this with her, it’s fitting that it’d be him.

“Seeing them together makes me want to _die,_ ” Jughead continues, rolling his eyes. “Like, it’s a seventh grade dance, not the Met Gala. Get the fuck over it.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Betty responds, feeling a little floored by his casual delivery of such a mean sentiment, but she gets it. That should be her and Archie! Cheryl doesn’t even like him, she’s just doing it because she knows it’ll make Betty upset, and then she can come by the second-floor girls’ bathroom and make fun of her for crying her mascara off. It’s a classic Cheryl move, and it’s not the first time she’s done it, either. “I hate Cheryl,” she says instead of all that, because it’s much easier.

“Me too,” Jughead agrees. “Her brother’s okay though.”

“ _You’re_ friends with Jason Blossom?” Betty asks, and she must sound too surprised because Jughead frowns.

“No. He’s sort-of friends with Archie so I have to see him more than I’d like to. But he’s not bad, definitely nothing like she is.”

“You consider Archie’s friends your friends by association?”

“Obviously. Why else would I be here trying to cheer _you_ up?” he says, and it makes her feel like a bit of a jerk. He came over here just to try and make her feel better, albeit in his own convoluted kind of way, and here she is, indirectly calling him weird and unpopular. It’s not like he isn’t already aware of that, but it must hurt extra badly for her to just bluntly point it out.

“Do you want to dance?” Betty asks, a peace offering.

“Not really, but it’ll probably make Archie get jealous, and it’s depressing to see you stand here looking all sad and wistful.” He offers her his hand and she takes it, stepping onto the makeshift dance-floor of their gym with him. He puts his hands on her shoulders, which isn’t how it works, but it is _Jughead,_ after all, so whatever. She puts her hands on his waist and they attempt to sway, only slightly better than Archie and Cheryl’s sad attempt.

Jughead is right. Within a good twenty seconds Archie swoops in with a _can I steal you, Betts,_ and she says _yes, of course,_ and Jughead exchanges a look with her that clearly says _I told you so._ And then she and Archie are dancing, and the DJ’s not so stupid anymore, and it could be the end of the world and she wouldn’t notice at all.

  
  
  


Betty finds a two-hour call from the middle of the night between them in Archie’s phone history, smiles at dinner, and heads out to the porch to call him immediately afterward.

“What was it about?” she demands, in lieu of a greeting. The two of them don’t really do small-talk, never have, not with each other or anyone else.

“What are you even talking about?”

“The 3 AM phone call.”

“Wow, going through your boyfriend’s phone and accusing him of cheating? I love how much trust you’ve got in your relationship,” Jughead says.

“What was it about?” she repeats.

“Just because you’re a cheater doesn’t mean I am,” he shoots back, his voice cracking in anger. It’s a low blow; no matter how well they understand each other’s various sore spots he always tends to go for the one that hurts the most.

“You can’t keep holding one kiss in high school against me!” she shout-whispers—after all, it is late out, and she doesn’t want anyone waking up and witnessing this depressingly repetitive exchange.

“Then stop holding my childhood crush against me!” he counters. 

“Admit it,” she says. “If you were in my place, you would’ve done the same thing.”

“No! I’ve told you a million times that I wouldn’t have, and I didn’t,” he says. “I had moments where I felt like that. The only difference between you and me is that I never did anything about it.” There’s a pause. She can hear him take a deep breath over the line. “Connor and I broke up.”

“Oh,” Betty says. Then, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be—it only lasted a couple months anyway. And it’s New York, not Riverdale, I have other options.” Another pause. “That’s what the phone call was about. It was really late, and I was spiraling, and he’s my best friend, and he always picks up. I’m not insidiously trying to ruin your life, even if it may look that way.”

“Just stop it,” she says. “I was just insecure. You would be too.”

“Yeah, of course I fucking would be,” he argues. “I’m not denying that part. I get it! I’m insecure too! I would’ve done this exact same shit! That’s why we never would’ve worked. Two sides of the same coin.”

“Well, that and…”

“Well, obviously,” Jughead says, and she laughs in spite of herself. That tends to be the way things between them go, push-and-pull, strangers one second and family the next—they try not to take it too far but the dynamic can still get tiring, sometimes.

“I guess just stop trying to…to take him,” she says, fully aware that people aren’t simply “taken”, that they have to _want_ to leave. She knows it better than anyone.

“Will do,” he says, and hangs up, leaving her feeling more cold and alone than ever.

  
  
  


Prom being a big event is supposed to be some made-up concept for teen coming-of-age movies, but of course Riverdale has to be as dramatic as it usually is. The night as a whole is a blur of crying and yelling and most of all getting yelled at, when Veronica puts it all together, the three of them all in the hallway, so horribly like sophomore year that it kills Betty to think back on it.

Jughead isn’t there, initially. One of the things Betty remembers most from prom night is how she finds him in the elective hallway a good ten minutes after Veronica’s voice has given out, sitting by himself on the bench outside the woodshop room with his phone in hand.

“Are you okay?” she asks, standing over him, adamantly refusing the part of her brain that tells her to sit down and comfort him and say _I didn’t mean it, it was a one time thing_ when both statements would be lies.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s cool.”

“Cool?” Betty asks, and she can still feel herself crying, the way her foundation doesn’t feel weirdly sticky under her tears like it usually would, and she remembers that it’s because she’s got Veronica’s really nice make-up on and that’s a whole other road she has yet to go down.

“Yeah,” he says again, and gets up and heads straight out the door to the student lot without another word. She lets him—does that make her a bad girlfriend, that she lets him leave? Betty knows he won’t even fully break down in front of her or Archie, so she just wants him to get to react on his own terms. She’s giving him the space he needs. That makes her a good girlfriend, right? Why is she so worried about being a good girlfriend? Does she have the right to still be worried about being a good girlfriend?

“Betty,” Archie says from behind her, totally disrupting her spiraling train of thought, and she turns and he’s there looking completely and utterly wrecked. “Veronica left. Said she needs time.”

“No shit, she needs time,” Betty says, and then it’s just her and Archie versus prom and high school and whatever else life wants to throw at them.

“Uh, Pop’s?” he offers, breaking the silence. “Unless it’d be weird.”

“No,” she says, “it’s us. Couldn’t be weird,” and when Archie smiles sadly at her she feels something take hold in her chest, something new and flighty and familiar at the same time.

  
  
  


A secret: Jughead may be the conspiracy theorist between them, but Archie’s the one who believes in a bunch of mythical(-ish?) creatures, and it’s all because he somehow got the idea in his head at age eight that Poptropica’s Cryptid Island was “inspired by true events”. All the adults who have gotten wind of it think that it’s cute and haven’t told him otherwise.

There’s a _lot_ of things people don’t tell Archie. Probably for the best, because the rules of knowing things are starting to get more and more complicated. Thirteen is a little too far past the age where you can still claim to simply _not know_ things, but just young enough that you can pretend you don’t. Jughead likes to pretend not to know a lot of things, but he doesn’t claim not to.

“You think Sweetie is real?” Archie asks, gesturing at the river. “I mean, I think he _could_ be, but he’s probably just too smart for us to see him. He probably has a home under the rocks, like, below the riverbed.”

“Since when is Sweetie a boy?” Jughead asks, completely ignoring the rest of Archie’s poorly-strung together thought process. Sweetwater River is nowhere near deep enough for a full-fledged water monster, but that doesn’t stop locals from using it to try and scare passing road-trippers away from the river. Really, it seems like the legend of some big old Mesozoic-inspired reptile would attract tourists, but when you add it to an unexplained string of drownings back in the 80s, it produces the opposite effect; helps keep it quiet out on the water during the summer.

“Well, Nessie is a girl, right, so if she ever comes over here from Scotland then they can fall in love,” Archie tells him. Jughead rolls his eyes and resists the urge to tell Archie that Sweetie and Nessie can still fall in love even if Sweetie’s a girl. He probably knows it already, just doesn’t get it yet; too ensconced in what’s “normal”—the “default”, if you will.

“I’m kind of amazed you know the Loch Ness is in Scotland,” Jughead says, and Archie laughs and says “well, it’s not like I’m _dumb,_ ” and then Jughead feels guilty for making him think he was trying to imply that in the first place. He racks his brain for some sentiment that Archie’ll understand, an apology without being an outward apology.

“You and me against the world, right?” he asks.

“You and me and Betty,” Archie says, elbowing him.

“Yeah,” he agrees, not really meaning it, and Archie smiles at him and intertwines their fingers over the railing. For a few minutes, Jughead imagines a world where the shadow of Betty’s absence doesn’t loom over them, where he says _it’s going to be you and me forever_ and Archie says _was there ever any question?_

Betty’s okay. But she’s not Archie, and deep down Jughead hopes that she and Archie don’t come here too, that she and Archie don’t hold hands and always end up getting splinters from skimming their fingers along the wooden railings as they walk.

Really, he just wants something for his own. It’s not really clear what that something is yet, but whatever his future is, he’s never imagined it without Archie in it.

  
  
  


A few months into Betty’s year off, into living with the Andrews and most importantly living _together_ , around Thanksgiving, Archie convinces Betty dinner is a good idea: it’ll clear the air between them all, he insists, and they’ll get to meet Jughead’s ambiguous neighbor-slash-significant-other, and it’ll just be a good time while he’s in town hanging out with the family.

Unfortunately, Jughead’s neighbor doesn’t use social media—one of those weird wannabe off-the-grid types, and Jughead won’t give up his name so Betty can’t look him up on a list of NYU’s MFA students or whatever. Realistically, she could do deeper research, but she’ll meet him soon enough, anyway. It doesn’t feel like an issue that requires more thought.

That is, until the doorbell rings. “I’ll get it,” Betty says, nodding to Archie in the kitchen. When she opens the Andrews’ front door, she’s struck speechless.

“Hey, Betty. This is Connor,” Jughead greets her, and Betty looks at him and for a second all she can think is _oh my god, he’s got red hair._

“Connor. Hi,” she says instead, and shakes his hand. “I’m Betty.”

Objectively, Jughead isn’t stupid, and Betty knows that for a fact. For someone who doesn’t like being around people all that much, he does understand them; quietly observes and calculates and maps them out like they’re fictional literary figures, like if he figures out their character motivations he’ll be able to interact with them properly. But he obviously hasn’t looked down at himself in a while, because Betty’s staring at this barely-6-foot red-haired preppy grad student with a warm smile and his arm around Jughead’s waist and the horror of it all is that he doesn’t even realize.

Archie enters the hallway while she’s still trying to formulate an opening sentence. “Betts, have you seen the—” he notices Jughead and his terribly familiar-looking boyfriend when he’s already three-fourths of the way to the door, unable to turn on his heel and escape, so there’s a stand-out moment where Archie and Connor make eye contact and Betty can tell that that’s the moment he gets it. “Sorry. I’m Archie,” he says blankly.

“Connor,” he introduces himself, reaching out to shake Archie’s hand.

“Connor,” Archie repeats, and tries to smile, so clearly connecting the dots in his head, and Betty watches all of it go down and just _knows_ that this will be a train wreck.

  
  
  


Jughead’s long since forgotten the exact occasion, but it must’ve been fifth grade or so, sometime in the middle of winter. Betty had invited Archie to come to her church for a mass, or something, and Archie had pulled his usual _can-Jughead-tag-along-too?_ card. “I just want someone else there who also doesn’t really know what’s going on,” he’d used as his excuse, and Jughead and Betty had stared each other down until she agreed: a necessary compromise.

It snows the morning of, and Jughead stands in front of Betty’s church and he just doesn’t want to go in at all.

He respects her beliefs, sure, the way that she clutches at the golden cross hanging low on her neck when she’s worried; the same way he respects how he has to walk to Pickens Park if he wants to hang out with Archie on Saturdays because Mary won’t drive. But respect doesn’t mean he thinks there’s some kind of celestial being watching over them. Having just turned eleven, he’s old enough to know that if your dad only ever comes home violent (if he comes home at all) and your mom just holes herself up in the bathroom to avoid arguing with him, no one’s watching over you. He’s hopeful, but not stupid.

“I think Betty wants us to meet her in the lobby,” Archie says, popping up beside him, right on time. “She’s probably waiting there right now. You coming?”

“Um, yeah,” Jughead responds, still looking up at the stained-glass and the slanted roof and the big, heavy cross on the top. He doesn’t want to come in, not even to support Archie and his accidental, unknowing romantic pursuit of Betty. Usually he would, but there’s just something about the building and… 

“Come on,” Archie says, pulling at his jacket, and Jughead looks one more time at the tall white steeple and follows.

  
  
  


At the startlingly early end of prom night, they walk home from Pop’s together. The lights inside both the Cooper-Jones house and the Andrews house are all on, and Betty probably has a few uncomfortable family discussions in her future.

She turns to Archie. “Don’t go,” she tells him in a moment of desperation.

“What?” He looks down at her.

“To the Naval Academy.”

“Betty,” he says, conflicted, “I don’t know if I can… I don’t want… What am I staying here for?”

“This,” she says, and takes the leap and kisses him, the first time after that night in the garage.

Maybe she’s had her doubts since then about what felt wrong and what felt right, and whether or not being with Archie would be as good if there wasn’t the added element of secrecy, of things that are forbidden, of crossing lines never crossed before. But this is perfect.

Well, realistically, it’s the somewhat-wet press of two mouths against each other. But it’s soft, and safe, and Betty feels like she’s melting. It feels like the physical equivalent of fate and destiny high-fiving (but that’s a weird, dorky metaphor that she won’t be sharing publicly anytime soon, thank you very much).

Her dress doesn’t match his tie, and it’s definitely not how she’d imagined her senior prom going back in elementary school, when eighteen was still two lifetimes away, but it’s close enough. She got the person she’d be kissing right, at least.

  
  
  


It’s junior year, somewhere in the middle—doesn’t really matter. When Archie texts in the middle of the night, Jughead always picks up. He knows he’d do the same for him. _Pickens Park?,_ it says, so he gets on his bike and heads over there, even though they really could just meet in the sideyard between their houses, now that Jughead’s staying with Betty and they’re pretty much neighbors. But things with him and Archie aren’t easy like that—never have been.

Archie’s waiting under the shadowy branches of the Devil’s Hand, which is super creepy, but whatever. And as if his text wasn’t worrying enough, he’s breathing hard, visibly shaken.

“Hey,” Jughead says, reaching out to take one of Archie’s hands in his. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t… I don’t know if anyone’s ever cared about me as much as they say they do,” Archie confesses.

“Arch,” Jughead says, and hesitates. “Archie, think about your mom, and your dad, and Betty and Veronica and me. I’m sure they can speak for themselves better than I can, but those are all people who really know you, and they love you because of who you are.”

“I know,” he says. “I know, Betty, you, my mom and dad. Veronica and I are…” Archie trails off into nothingness, and yeah, he might not be wrong on that one. “And I’m finding new people. Josie and I were just talking the other day. She’s really nice.”

“She is,” Jughead agrees, even though he and Josie have had maybe two conversations ever. From experience, the best way to calm Archie down is to try and understand him, which is why Jughead and Betty are usually the ones on the receiving ends of these texts and not, well… 

“But she’s nice to me because she doesn’t know me,” Archie interrupts. “I don’t think anyone who ever really knows me will be able to love me like that.”

“They will,” Jughead tells him. “I promise they will. Archie,” he says, thinks the better of it, says it anyway. “Listen to me. I love you. You’re everything to me.”

Archie presses their foreheads together. “Do you really mean that?” he murmurs.

“Of course I do,” Jughead says. “I would never lie to you.”

“I know,” Archie says, and for a second Jughead thinks, maybe—but the moment passes. 

“I’m so sorry about last-last-summer,” he says instead. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Jughead insists, but he lets it go. Once Archie has an idea in his head it’s hard to get him to believe anything else.

“You’re my favorite person in the world,” Archie continues, in that big, intense-sounding way he relays everything when he’s in this kind of space. “I don’t know if I’ll ever love someone as much as I love you.”

It’s not true, it’s just spur-of-the-moment, and once he calms down Archie will stop making these huge statements, but it still hits. _And it’s still not enough,_ Jughead thinks, feeling horribly guilty. Can he stop making everything about himself for five seconds? “You will,” he promises again, holding Archie’s face in his hands, feeling small and inadequately prepared to handle things. “I swear.”

  
  
  


Betty’s desk is generally off-limits—not for any nefarious reason, just because Archie has a tendency to accidentally scatter papers and she has this whole organization system going. It works for them.

Late March, after Mary and Brooke have checked out for the night, Archie sets an envelope down on the coffee table. “Hey, I noticed there’s a whole bunch of acceptances into grad programs and not a single one is in-state. Did you apply to any programs _not_ on the West Coast?” She pats the spot next to her on the couch, and Archie takes a seat.

“Yes,” she says. “Well, just Columbia. And that one was a rejection.”

“Betty… I’m proud of you, of course I am, but I think we need to talk about what this means for us.” 

“I thought you would… I thought you would want to come with me,” she admits.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” he asks. “You realize we’re a team, and you’re making these decisions for me, too. It really feels like it’s becoming this pattern where you choose what I want— _who_ I want, without even asking me. I’m a person, Betty.”

“I know that,” she says, “I know, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to dictate your life. I’m just trying to figure things out for myself and I haven’t really considered it yet—like, a future where we’re not together.”

“Why not apply to any schools here?” he responds. Then, sharper-edged: “Do you just desperately need to get away from me?”

“No! Of course not. It’s not _you,_ Archie,” she says, exasperated. “It’s _Riverdale._ It’s everything I’ve ever known. Living with you this past almost-year has been great— _being_ with you, in-person and otherwise, for the last few years has been amazing. But when I’m in this house I look out the window and there’s a physical reminder of my trauma. And I might be working through it, but I can’t escape from here. From this close.”

“I can’t leave Riverdale, Betty,” Archie says sadly. “My family, my kids…”

“They’re not _really_ your kids—”

“Yes, they are!” he argues. “Betty, I walk into that classroom every day and I’m acting as a parent to some of those kids, and I don’t want to do that somewhere else. I won’t leave Riverdale.”

“What do you want, Archie?” she asks. “Would you really take this dead-end small-town life over _us_? Over the possibility of rebuilding something _good,_ somewhere where we don’t have to deal with our pasts anymore? You only _just_ got your first real job! My internship’s been going great and my year off from school is almost over. We’re still really young. It’s not too late for us to leave and build something new.”

“What do I want?” he asks, then falters. “I…I want _you_. But I’m not going to take some bullshit ultimatum from you, deciding between our relationship and the rest of my family, my community…the life my dad would’ve been happy to see me living. We’re twenty-three, not thirteen. I’m not asking you to stay behind for me, but you planning on moving across the country without telling me…”

“Archie, I love you,” Betty says, “but I can’t live here anymore. I thought I could, when I was a kid, even just a couple years ago, but now I know I can’t live this life. I don’t want to be stuck going…nowhere.”

“Just because we’re not going in the same direction doesn’t mean I’m not going anywhere,” Archie tells her, his eyes shining, oddly reminiscent of a night in the bunker five years ago. “Maybe you should sleep at your mom’s tonight.”

“Maybe I should,” she agrees. It feels like the closing of a chapter in Jughead’s stupid roman à clef, autobiografiction-type novel, finally released outside of the microcosm of Riverdale just earlier this month; the closure of all of those days left so far behind her. _And so marks the inevitable beginning of the end,_ he would narrate—for the better, she tells herself. It has to be.

  
  
  


Jughead gets a lot of calls the day his book comes out, a few surprising ones from people like Veronica (they still don’t get along, but they have a begrudging mutual respect for each other) and a lot of expected ones from people like Betty (even their worst fights have never been able to get in the way of their care for one another). He isn’t teaching, it’s a Friday, so he stays in his apartment remotely thanking various family members and academic acquaintances who’ve helped him through the whole process. They’re mostly from undergrad, people who he won’t see on Monday in class or while passing through the English department.

Nothing prepares him for Archie’s number flashing across his screen at 11:30 PM, not when it’s been less than a month since Connor unceremoniously dumped him (for being “too hung up on the past”, as if his life wasn’t already tragically ironic enough), not when he just has no capacity for whatever new dumb thing Archie’s about to say and destroy him all over again.

He answers it.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” Archie says, and when Jughead doesn’t respond: “I read your book.”

“It’s 300 pages,” Jughead says, incredulous.

“Yeah, well, I spent the day reading it.”

“Is this really Archie Andrews I’m speaking to?”

“It may interest you to know that Archie Andrews developed a strong work ethic and passion for reading in the process of getting his teaching degree,” he says, to which Jughead replies “you can drop the third-person thing now, it’s getting weird,” so he does.

“Back in high school,” he starts, and Jughead has been dreading this moment since he got his publishing deal, since he sent the final draft to his agent, since he wrote it down in the first place: “you meant it, didn’t you?” It’s a question, not an accusation. It is Archie, after all.

“Are you joking, Archie?” Jughead says, and laughs. He knows that Archie knows that’s his tell just as well as Betty does, that he gets that he’s close to snapping completely, barely holding it together. “You really didn’t know?”

“I…” Archie hesitates. “I had no idea,” and Jughead hates him for it, because it’s true. Archie doesn’t simply claim to not know things, never has. He never pretends, either, and Jughead hates him for that, too. Sure, he lied about him and Betty, senior year. But Archie’s not a liar, by nature. Does that make sense? It does to Jughead.

“It’s okay,” he says, trying to take it all back, attempting to figure out how to pick out the words he published and fit them back into his brain. His book is fiction, sure—thinly-veiled fiction, marketed as a “retelling” of the darkest years of a suburban nightmare. Obviously some feelings would come through either way. “I don’t know. Maybe I always thought somewhere that I was your favorite,” he says, and the confession runs like a chill down his back: now it’s _really_ all out there in the open, that lingering fantasy at the back of his mind released into the world.

“Jug,” Archie tries, finally left unresponsive. There’s nothing he can say that won’t just make things worse, and he can’t really make his sad puppy face over the phone, so that’s out of the question, too. Honestly, it’d have been better if he hadn’t called at all.

“Hope you enjoyed the book,” Jughead says, and hangs up, and the feeling is crushingly, devastatingly heartbreaking. It’s the culmination of years of feeling too much, building up a barrier between himself and his teenage feelings only for it all to come crashing down.

If he cries about the phone call, on a day that’s supposed to be one of the happiest of his life—well, he lives alone, so no one else gets to know, anyway.

  
  
  


Betty and Jughead fight, hard, during the first week of break, junior year of college, while they’re all back from school for the holidays.

By all accounts, it should just be a normal dinner-date at Pop’s with Archie and Veronica. The details that have changed post-high school are minimal, reminiscent of an even earlier time—Archie and Betty sit on the same side with his arm around her shoulders, and Jughead and Veronica sit as far apart as they can on the other, forever the two most likely to hold grudges. Veronica may have let Archie and Betty back into her life as friends, keeping them at a respectful distance from herself, but she and Jughead have never really given a fuck about each other and it’s clear now that they never will.

Conversation is tense, and every time Betty laughs at something Archie says she’s met with a glare from Jughead, and it’s just so bitter and juvenile. Maybe she should’ve told him in private first, but she and Archie had decided that this would be fine, that they could handle sneaking around over a couple summers back from college instead of springing it on them immediately after graduation. That was the whole point: these wounds should be healed by now. Veronica doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, at least (or she’s just better at hiding it).

It gets on Betty’s nerves all through dinner, but she waits until they’re back home to confront him about it. Jellybean is in the living room, deeply engrossed in some first-person shooter game, so she doesn’t seem to mind when Betty drags Jughead through to the backyard to talk, passing by FP and her mom in the kitchen.

“What the hell is your problem?” Betty demands as soon as the screen door shuts. “What do you have against me and Archie?”

“What’s _your_ problem?” he retaliates, clearly not willing to cooperate. She stares at him for a long moment.

“Are you…still in love with me?” Betty finally asks, uncertain.

“Oh, it’s all about you now, is it?” Jughead asks, and laughs at her. She feels where it hits her in the chest, cutting ugly and deep. He always knows just where to hurt her; they knew each other’s weak points before they ever knew what kissing felt like, before their relationship, before sophomore year, before there was ever a need to use those things against each other.

“What else would it be about?” she replies, even though she knows there’s another question with another answer, one that neither of them likes, one that Archie was always too oblivious to figure out. Jughead scoffs at her and turns away, subconsciously pulling his sleeves down.

“This part was never really about you,” he says coldly. “I know that. You know that. Don’t make me say it out loud to you.”

And she does know. Much of Betty’s childhood is a blur, but she remembers the very moment she cracked the code like it was yesterday, back when they were maybe five or six; Archie had just introduced her to Jughead for the first time and he dutifully stuck out his hand for her to shake. She wanted to laugh at his odd formality, but she also didn’t want to risk making either him or Archie mad, so she shook it solemnly.

As soon as he’d let go of her hand, Jughead had turned to Archie and asked “I’m still your favorite, right?”, as if Betty wasn’t standing right there in front of them. Archie laughed.

“Don’t fight,” he’d said. “You’re my best guy friend and my best girl friend,” and Betty had seen how Jughead’s eyes narrowed and she’d immediately started a little tally in her mind, keeping track of their unspoken competition for Archie’s attention even then.

“You’re in love with him,” she tells him in the present, heavy and accusatory. “Oh my god. You were in love with him the whole time.” He looks like he’s about to say something, but she stops him. “Fuck you. You don’t get the right to be mad about me and Archie when it’s not like you even cared about me in the first place.”

“I cared about you,” he says. “That’s not fair. I cared about you.”

“Did you?” she asks. “Are you, what, bisexual? Is that your excuse?”

“Shut the fuck up,” he hisses, pointing at the light still shining through the kitchen window, “our parents are in there.” And Betty is mad, sure, but she’s not that mad, and she’s just not the kind of person to stoop that low. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

“You didn’t love me.”

“Please don’t tell me that _this_ is what’s made you decide to start caring about our former relationship. You want the truth?”

“Yes, I want the truth,” she says, even though she really doesn’t think she does.

“Fine. I didn’t really like having sex with you. I haven’t felt attracted to a girl, ever, in my life. I loved you, really, I’m not lying about that, but I didn’t like the kissing or literally anything past that. But it was easier to pretend,” he says. “You were the most important person in my life, I won’t erase our past like that. When I think about high school I think about you. You define that period of my life, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was never going to be able to love you like that. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No one wants to hear that,” Betty tells him, but she _did_ want to hear it. As much as it hurts, it makes her feel a little better to know that it wasn’t her fault. She can’t make Archie love someone he’s not capable of loving, so whatever Jughead’s got left over consists of resentment and hurt feelings. “But it’s not my fault Archie doesn’t love you back. He just can’t.”

“What, is that a line Veronica used on you?” he says, and she resists the urge to go back to old habits, to crush her nails into her palms. “And it just took me by surprise today. It won’t happen again. I’m happy for you, really.”

“No, you’re not,” she corrects.

“No, I’m not,” he agrees, and turns back to the house. “In time I will be. But maybe you should ask yourself why you’re so defensive, if he _can’t,_ ” and with that he heads inside.

Betty loves Archie. And she knows Archie loves her. But Jughead’s words still get to her, and she thinks about the phrase _cheaters cheat again,_ and patterns, and Archie.

That night, she sleeps next door, the curtains closed and Archie softly breathing against the back of her neck, his fingers burning where they’re splayed out on her stomach. She doesn’t stop thinking.

  
  
  


Jughead, post-debut release, is finally getting back into the swing of things, to working on his spring creative project with quickly-approaching deadlines, when the doorbell rings.

“Next phase isn’t due for another week, Em,” he calls out as he sets his laptop down on the kitchen counter and heads toward the front door. “If you’re going to ask about—”

It’s Archie, his hair slightly damp, wearing a dark grey hoodie with SUNY New Paltz’s logo crossing it in bright blue and orange, looking hopeful and decidedly older and like every romantic drama love-interest ever.

“Hey,” he says. “Can we talk?”

Jughead shuts the door.

  
  
  


After the party, in the diner, Jughead half-apologizes to her like he always does. It’s one of his most glaring flaws and they both know it, how he never wants to take full responsibility.

“I didn’t mean what I said about Archie,” he says, “I was just mad. I’m sorry,” and he may be sorry, that part may be true, but Betty knows he meant what he said about her and Archie and the two of them as a ticking time bomb. She’s fifteen, not stupid.

“It’s fine,” she says. “Maybe we just have to make a pact like Veronica and I did.”

Jughead snorts. “What, that no _boy_ is going to come between us?”

“More like no Archie comes between us,” she says, but she’s not really joking about it. “No more using him against each other.” Betty extends her pinky finger to him. “Come on.”

“Fine, promise,” he agrees, interlocking their fingers, and she kisses him, soft and slow, deep down wishing he were Archie instead. She wonders what he’s thinking about, if his mind is somewhere else, too.

They don’t keep the promise. It doesn’t even last two weeks.

  
  
  


Betty hears rustling outside the treehouse and hopes, prays that Archie has come to find her and tell her he’s been in love with her this whole time, that he made a mistake by agreeing to go to the dance with Ginger Lopez, that he wants to marry her and spend the rest of their lives together. It’s extreme, but they always say to shoot for the moon, right?

But it’s Jughead, because of course it is.

“Didn’t think I’d find you here,” he says. “This is sort of Archie and I’s…”

“Sorry,” she says. “I know. I just needed to be alone and my mom thinks I’m at the dance, and I knew Archie wouldn’t be here, so…”

“Why aren’t you at the dance?” he asks.

“It’s just the stupid eighth-grade graduation ball,” she says.

“Yeah, which is the middle-school equivalent of prom,” he says. “I thought that’d be your thing.”

“It _is_ my thing,” she defends, because Betty’s been student council president for the two years it’s been possible, and she’s the one who organized the dance and chose the theme and set up all the decorations just to end up wallowing alone.

“Fine, I’ll bite,” he says, taking a seat next to her. “What’s bothering you?”

“Archie,” she answers.

“As per usual.”

“It’s just… it’s hard to explain, but seeing him with Ginger… I don’t just want Archie,” she admits, hugging her knees to her chest. “It’s bigger than that. I want a life with Archie, I want kids, and a nice house, and I want a pet, maybe, and even if he doesn’t know it yet I know he wants that life too.”

“He’s slow on the uptake,” Jughead tells her. “He always is.”

“I just want to be happy,” she says, feeling tears welling up in her eyes. He leans against her, pressing their sides together.

“I know,” he assures her. “Trust me, I know.”

“What do you want?” she asks, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I want,” he begins, then thinks better of it. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“It’s just me,” she says, her voice starting to break, and because she knows it’ll make him feel better: “you can’t be any more of a loser than I already know you to be.”

“You don’t know me that well,” he says. She chokes out a laugh, feeling for his hand.

“Archie says you’re a loser,” she murmurs, lacing their fingers together, squeezing his hand tight enough that it must hurt. He doesn’t react at all.

“No shit,” Jughead says.

“He says the only reason you’re a loser is because you don’t care about winning. Like, you don’t play by society’s rules, or something.” When she glances over at Jughead, he gives her a look. “Archie’s words, not mine.”

“That is _so_ dumb,” he replies. “I guess he has a point. But still dumb.”

“He doesn’t love me,” Betty says, more to herself than Jughead.

“He’s dumb for that. And hey, if it makes you feel any better, Archie doesn’t love me either,” he says, nudging her. “So we’re in the same boat there.”

“You’re not funny,” she says, elbowing him back, but it makes her smile, her tears starting to slow down. “In a perfect world, all three of us could live together,” she says. “And I’d have my perfect life and kids and you’d be there, too.”

“I don’t think it really works like that,” Jughead says. She sees in his eyes what he’s unwilling to point out: she’s never liked sharing, and there is no Betty and Archie without Jughead fitting in somewhere between them, and vice versa.

“Don’t you want more out of life than this?” she asks. He pauses for a long moment.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get what I want,” he finally says. “So I can work with the compromise.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Betty says, resting her head on his shoulder. “This is all so fucked up. We’re so fucked up.” 

“Wow, language, Cooper,” he tells her. They’re really not friends at all—she doesn’t know when his birthday is or what his house looks like, and if you asked him her favorite color he’d probably guess pink, even though it’s actually purple. But he doesn’t make her think about Ginger and Archie and the fact that she painstakingly did her make-up all by herself, and in return she doesn’t ask him why he showed up at the treehouse, too, or what the thing is that he wants that doesn’t really matter.

They sit like that for a while, Betty’s candy-painted nails digging into Jughead’s hand without any complaints from him. Archie never comes.

**Author's Note:**

> yes i did have a weird somewhat romantic high-school friendship don't ask. also i read the absolutely terrible prequel novel to the show and i am OBSESSED with the canon fact that riverdale has its own walmart version of nessie.
> 
> title from [every time you go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoC-TbwfMWI) \- ellie goulding which in my mind encapsulates the vibes here
> 
> as always i'm on [tumblr](https://englishmajorjughead.tumblr.com/)!


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